50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany by Steven Pressman Page A

for more children. Although the group later resumed its rescue efforts, it was constantly frustrated by the rigid immigration rules and managed to bring in a total of fewer than four hundred children by the end of 1938. These children typically arrived one or two at a time rather than as part of larger groups. The Brith Sholom plan differed significantly because of its attempt to bring in a larger group of children all together.
    Razovsky, meanwhile, had recently worked out an agreement with the Labor Department to bring in twenty children each month. But bureaucratic delays and other administrative obstacles made even that modest goal impossible. “We not only are not taking large groups, but we are even slowing up on those whom we have ordered . . . because of the long delays in the quota,” Razovsky wrote in late December 1938 to the head of Atlanta’s Hebrew Orphan Home, who had asked her about plans to bring in Jewish children from the Reich. “We get people coming in all day long who do nothing but scold us and regard us as personally responsible because the children cannot come in.”
    As conditions in Nazi Germany deteriorated, Razovsky and others grew more frustrated than ever with the rigid limits imposed by American immigration policies. Razovsky received a letter from the wife of Rabbi Wise, asking whether it might be possible to bring in the young daughter from a Jewish family she knew in Dusseldorf, Germany. “Since the quota waiting list is so long, I am afraid the children whom we register now won’t come in for at least another year,” replied Razovsky. A few weeks later, Mrs. Wise wrote again to Razovsky, this time as the chairman of the Child Adoption Committee of the Free Synagogue, the New York City synagogue led by her husband. Once again, Razovsky could offer nothing but discouragement. “I am afraid there will not be any children available for adoption in the near future in view of the terrible crowded condition of the quota at this time,” she wrote. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, Razovsky’s group became even more inundated with pleas for help. “Persons who received affidavits some time ago now want us to use our influence with Washington to get them out of Germany quickly,” Razovsky wrote to a woman in Erie, Pennsylvania, who was concerned about the worsening situation in Germany. “Of course that is absolutely out of the question. There is nothing we can do to help these thousands of trapped unfortunates. They have no preference on the quota and their turns will come two years hence possibly.”
    Once it began circulating around Philadelphia that Gil had taken on the project, several of the city’s Jewish leaders decided to try and talk him out of it. Some, convinced that he would almost certainly fail, were worried that the project would make it even harder for other rescue efforts to proceed. Others feared that it would generate additional backlash against Jewish groups throughout the United States. In early March, a group of men dropped by Gil’s office only to find out that he was in Washington that day for a meeting at the State Department. They made an appointment to see him once he returned home. “A few days later, three of the most important and leading Philadelphia Jews called on Gil . . . and told him we must drop any idea or plan that we had at once,” wrote Eleanor. “They told him that he could not possibly succeed.”
    Although Eleanor did not name her husband’s visitors, she did identify one of the men who arrived the next day with a similar message: Kurt Peiser, the director of Philadelphia’s Federation of Jewish Charities. Peiser, who was a few years older than Gil, had been born in Germany and brought to the United States with his family when he was twelve. He had worked for a variety of Jewish charitable groups in Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and Detroit before moving to Philadelphia. As Eleanor described the meeting, Peiser wasted no time in insisting